Don't fool yourself into thinking that trust is something that is all love and pixie dust. After all, you take the good with the bad. Just because you trust someone does not negate every negative thing that could happen with them. If your "trust" in something is as fragile as paper or a treasured vase, maybe it's time to reconsider it? You don't have to trust someone, just like you don't have to distrust them either.

Everyone will tell you that it's time to get your bearings straight, that it's time to straighten up, and time to get your act together. Sure, but unless you're a raging alcoholic with an methamphetamine addiction raising seven kids in a split level house, I really don't see what the urgency is.

Some people like to think of the glass as half full. Others think of the glass as half empty. But to me, there is plainly no glass. What if that glass was broken? Then the contents would begin to flow out. But what if there was just no glass in the first place? Imagine an infinitely empty room; one that you ould fill up with whatever you want. Unlike a glass, whatever you fill this room up with would never overflow. This thought may seem a little extreme for an 8th grader who is only about to graduate, but sometime in your life, you begin to just think. Personally, that time is now.

Maybe you're good at baking. Or maybe you show promising painting skills. Maybe you're a swimmer, a fashion designer, a writer, a researcher, or a photographer. Honestly, maybe you're just unnaturally gifted at painting walls. I don't know. The point is, you aren't given a gift for no reason. It's hard to see it sometimes, like if you can naturally fire off puns without thinking. Or if you're a D-list version of Spiderman where you have all the powers of a spider, but you are also actually a spider.

But even spiders, creepy as they are, serve a higher purpose that is essentially saving you from all the other nasty bugs that could be crawling around your house. You see, a spider understands that its ability to pick out great places to put webs (i.e., everywhere you are going to walk) comes with the responsibility of eradicating everything else.

Bravery and courage—all of us, in some capacity, wish to be courageous. And we've all heard it before: courage is not the absence of fear, but rather what is done in spite of fear. Easier said than done, right?